1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus of displaying a character input in a portable terminal, and in particular, to a method and an apparatus of displaying multiple character input by providing a character having a movement effect when the character corresponding to a key input is displayed in a character input mode.
2. Description of the Related Art
Along with the rapid development of communication systems, portable terminals such as mobile communication terminals, DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) terminals or PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) have become commonplace. In addition to mobile wireless call communication functions, portable terminals can now provide a plurality of other functions. For example, portable functions such as a background screen setting function, an SMS (short message service) message function, an MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group) Layer 3 function, a wireless Internet function, a digital camera function, a TV function, VOD (Video-On-Demand) function, etc. Particularly, an SMS message function for transmitting or receiving a written message and phone book function for making a corresponding call by searching a stored telephone number are related with a character input function.
Portable terminals typically display various characters when using a character input or display function. Although conventional portable terminals display characters using fonts that are set by the portable terminal's manufacturer or service provider, users may desire to display a personalized font. However, conventional portable terminals do not provide the user with an option to change a character's font according to the user's setting. Rather, conventional portable terminals display characters using font set at the time of manufacture.
A typical character input display will be described with reference to FIG. 1.
FIG. 1 is an illustration showing a conventional method of displaying characters in a portable terminal.
Referring to FIG. 1, step 100 is an initial screen for writing a new message. In steps 102 to 108, in a character input mode the characters ‘Ahn’ are input and displayed. In step 110, the character ‘n’ is deleted from the previously input characters ‘Ahn’ when a cancel key is selected by the user.
Although personalization of portable terminals is desirable, conventional portable terminals merely display a character corresponding to key input by a user at the position where a cursor is blinking and only provide a function of the user to change a background screen. Moreover, in conventional portable terminals, a background screen image is not correlated with a selected character display mode. Therefore, a user cannot personalize his or her portable terminal to fully reflect the user's individual taste.
In other words, standardized uniform character input displays of conventional portable terminals cannot meet a user's desire to customize the display. Accordingly, a method and an apparatus of providing new and dynamic character input display are necessary.